A compact left-handed opener, Perera is strong square of the wicket and elegant all around the ground. He earned his Under-19 chance after impressing as an over-age player in the Super Fours series last year and then seized that opportunity with a good showing on tour in South Africa in December 2017.Perera moved over to the UK from Sri Lanka as a teenager and has since become a regular in the Middlesex 2nd XI side.

Scyld Berry, The Telegraph, 3 January 2018, where the title is “Australian Aboriginal team became cricket pioneers 150 years ago this week

Exactly 150 years ago this week, a team of cricketers were preparing in Sydney for the first sports tour by Australians, and for the first cricket tour to England. Before they set sail on Feb 8, the Duke of Edinburgh attended their practice on a couple of days, although when Queen Victoria’s second son watched cricket, he was normally not amused.

These pioneers were Aboriginal Australians. Five years earlier, they had never seen cricket, let alone played it. Yet they took to the sport with such natural dexterity that when they played MCC at Lord’s, they led on first innings and might have won if two of their players had not been injured.

The first Aboriginal cricket team outside the MCC pavilion of the Melbourne Cricket Ground -Pic fr Wikipedia

First, allow me to lay out a bias: I was probably always going to like this one. Sri Lanka does not, alas, produce a wealth of cricket books. Where Ben Stokes already has a hardcover in circulation, Muttiah Muralitharan is yet to flog a 400-page grievance – the likes of which have recently become the prerogative of so many retired cricketers. (And of endured hardships, who could possibly have a greater store than Murali?)

This article appeared earlier in The Ceylankan, a quarterly produced by the Ceylon Research Society, a body of Lankan enthusiasts in Australia.

Sometime around 2001 a couple of autographs came up for sale at Christie’s auction house in London: they were of the visiting English women cricketers who played a match in Colombo against the Ceylon women in the first “test” of its kind in 1948. I was lucky to trace two of the test cricketers from the Ceylon team who now live in Victoria, Beverley Roberts (now Mrs Juriansz) and Enid (Gilly) Fernando. Incidentally Gilly is called Gilly after AER Gilligan the Australian cricketer and answers to no other name.

Having been presented with his honorary life membership of Surrey CCC, Kumar Sangakkara took to the stage to deliver a rousing speech that will live long in the memory of all present on the evening. Here it is in full:

First of all, with the honorary life membership; I think someone has read my mind. About three days ago I was thinking about whether I should ask for the chance to be a fee paying member at Surrey. When I received honorary life membership at the MCC I thought nothing could top that because that was something that was on my list but this, from Surrey, has actually topped that so thank you very much.

George Dobell, courtesy of ESPNcricinfo, where the title is “Embarrassed by how West Indies played in the nineties – Lara”

Brian Lara has implored the top sides in world cricket “to ensure that the integrity of the game is upheld” and admitted there were times he was “truly embarrassed” by the behaviour of the West Indies side he represented.

Michael Holding kicks the stumps in anger Getty Images

Lara, delivering the MCC Spirt of Cricket Cowdrey lecture at Lord’s, not only called on batsmen to “walk” but suggested the leading sides had a responsibility to “show the way and lead the way” in which the game is played.And, despite the outstanding record of the West Indies sides of the 1980s and early 1990s, Lara felt they were occasions when the tactics they employed resulted in them “playing the game in a way it should never, ever be played.” Read the rest of this entry ?